September 25 I headed off at 4:30pm for a tour of the ponds and decided to go to Shangri-la Pond first hoping to get there before the beavers came out so I could check on their recent work without disturbing them. I went over to the northwest corner of the pond to see if I could tell how beavers eat acorns. But first I admired the relatively large cherry tree they cut down, beautiful bark and wood,
but beavers never seem to really relish the tree, seldom completely stripping it.
And they are working on a clump of maples that show three levels of cutting, the whims of one beaver or the disperate efforts of two or three?
Then I nosed around where the beavers nose around looking for acorns and I saw acorns that had been crushed and decapped.
I noticed a trail scraped up through the moss hugging the rocks forming the cliff. I'm sure a beaver made it.
I followed and since I didn't see any trees up there cut or cutable, I'm sure the beaver went up for the ease of finding acorns nestled in the moss.
Since I was half way up the ridge, I continued along it, looking down at the pond to see the beavers' leftover stripped sticks. I noticed that they do have a channel through the grasses in the middle of the pond.
I sat where I could get a good view of the lodge. No cache there yet and no action either. I continued down to the end of the north canal and found that they are cutting another small tree near the end of the canal. Somehow that tree
survived last winter's harvest.
The remaining trunk of the once large tri-trunked red maple finally blew down. The beavers cut down two of the trunks late last fall and cut most of the branches and stripped the bark off a small portion of the first trunk to fall. They half cut the third trunk before losing interest in that area last winter. Being half cut didn't prevent the tree from having a healthy crown of leaves this fall.
It will be interesting to see what the beavers take, and they are nosing around the area since they are cutting a smaller maple right next to it. So far one branch has been cut.
There is no new gnawing on the huge willow they cut. The canal coming up from the north canal is as muddy as usual
and up along it they cut down one maple they've been gnawing off and on for some time, but not much work on it. I didn't nose around the dam, but they are not cutting the cattails yet like they did last fall. I crossed the dry upper end of the East Trail Pond and saw large trails in it. Evidently deer have a taste for the sticky, grassy vines which makes much of the meadow impassable for me. As I approached the little duckweed coated pool behind the dam, a mallard flew off, and then I saw a miracle. A beaver had cut down a large red maple that grew just
below the dam.
When the beavers left this pond in May of 2004, I couldn't understand why. The colony had just seemed to be getting the hang of hauling up trees below the dam, and for years I had watched beavers fatten up during the spring and summer on grasses and ferns that grew in and around the pond that never lacked for water since two canyons and two long valleys drained into it. Today, looking back at the pool and meadow behind, there was no evidence there that a beaver had returned.
I checked the downed maple to be sure that a beaver was beginning to make a meal out of it. They cut a few branches off the maple and started cutting two smaller trees brushed by the crown of the fallen tree.
I saw that the beaver had packed mud on the dam, and sticks, and I think that is where it is making its lodge for a moment.
My mind reels as I think of how beavers might reconstruct the pond. The dam has two major leaks and they are right on top of the bigger one. Once they get water they can eat their way through the vegetation into the old burrows on the west slope just behind the dam and see if the bank lodge there is habitable and once the water floods back to it, they should have no trouble getting the old lodge in shape, though they'll have to pull out some logs because most of the entrances have collapsed. This is more exciting than seeing an otter family return because this was the pond where most of the pups I saw were born and first raised. Perhaps if it is restored an otter family will return. I have pondered these ponds long enough to see the end and a new beginning. Here a cut tree means rebirth.
The beaver or beavers also gnawed a large red oak and tasted another, but I didn't see any other trees cut yet.
The other nice thing is this pond is just out of the range of hunters so I will be able to check on developments. Let's hope the beavers stay and we have a wet fall. The Second Swamp Pond is low
and with a cursory glance I saw no signs that beavers are in the lodge here.
However as I puzzled along the thickly vegetated Upper Second Swamp Pond dam I saw that beavers keep pushing mud up on the dam. Perhaps that is their nervous way of tempting the rain, build up the dam and the water will come.
No signs of activity at the old lodge.
I saw a channel into the grass to the southeast. Perhaps there is a small lodge in there. The Lost Swamp Pond looked unstressed, with ample water,
but it was quiet. No ospreys, no muskrats, no beavers. I thought there was nothing added to the lodge by the dam where the beavers had been and maybe there was a little more brush and sticks on the lodge in the middle of the pond, where the beavers moved after the coyote's visit. Be interesting to see if they moved permanently. That said, if that coyote had not flushed out a beaver the other afternoon, seeing no signs, I would have concluded the beavers were long gone. The southeast end of the pond at least had grazing ducks and three deer ankle deep in the pond. The shallowest water seems most attractive to animals this year. The wet summer must have stocked those areas with endless seeds. It was well after a six, but no beavers nor muskrats to be seen. I did see trails through the grass of the
pond, a great archway
which I trust the beavers plow since there are fewer geese here, and ducks usually fly to get from one end of the pond to the other. There were also no beavers out at the Big Pond, only a deer, knee deep, that I sent sloshing to the shore of high cattails. I did see a wet trail coming out of the north end of the dam,
and trails coming over and below the dam. Deer could be doing that, but I just said they prefer the shallower parts of the pond. So let me credit beavers, though they've only gone once or twice because beavers pack down a trail.
That said, I don't think I could have made it along the dam, if a deer hadn't broken the way. The vegetation was not as high as it was a month ago but it seems to be lowering down into a thick snarl.
Again, I didn't push on to the south end of the dam, and instead walked down the relatively "shallow" meadow below the dam. There are no meals from big trees down here, but how could a vegetarian like a beaver not find a meal wading up that slope through goldenrods into the red osiers?
Blue jays all over, and I saw a few wrens.
September 26 when leaves start changing, I'd just as soon sit and watch them do it. But at our land, September sets a deadline. First we picked as many apples as we could off our apple trees, primarily for apple sauce. I find the apples very juicy but not that tasty now. Since I was in the neighborhood I walked around the Deep Pond to see what the beavers have been doing. They left the last large aspen log I gave them by the dam, good place for it, ready to fill a breach.
Going along the dam, I saw a narrow crossover which the muskrats probably use to get to the vegetation below.
Not that they are ignoring the vegetation behind the dam. The pickeral weed is all trimmed, or did the beavers or deer do that?
Then I saw some prints in the mud, first thinking it might be the bobcat's but I saw a hint of nails which bobcat prints usually don't show, but, to grip the mud...?
The path going up the slight slope to the west looks more worn
and they finally cut all they could off the bush in the middle of the little vernal pool.
I saw a few more nips here and there and then went up to contemplate the pond, and realized I had forgotten my sometimes annual birthday photo. Sixty-one years around the earth and still looking.
I went down to take a close look at the beavers' lodge which seems to grow primarily by the addition of small sticks at the top of the lodge
The lower part of the lodge has a few more meaty logs
I didn't see many stripped sticks along the shore by the lodge, evidently they've given up eating there or make sure to park the stripped sticks on the lodge -- though I've never known beavers to be religious about picking up after
themselves. Then I contemplated the mystery of the vegetation around the inlet creek. It looks like a good bit has been cleared out by the beavers but I have trouble seeing the stubble and stumps they left.
Then I went in back of the lodge and contemplated a mystery to come, why aren't they cutting the many maple saplings behind them? waiting for winter?
Farther up the inlet creek I saw that a large sugar maple was blown over. I broke off a small branch and took it to the Deep Pond and sat to see if the beaver would come out as usual, not because I was leaving a branch but because I walked so close to the lodge. Soon enough one appeared. First far away,
then it came closer, sniffing,
then it went to the dam where I usually leave aspen logs, but wasn't ostentatious about it; not going up on the dam, or even surfacing as if to say "feed me." It surfaced by the lodge and then dove into it. Going back to the road, I admired a wall of goldenrods still yellow with a few red galls
Then I had to get to work. I grabbed an axe and blazed the ironwoods and maples that I could see had died. There is nothing quite so visually stimulating as this but nothing gets in the way more than a camera bag as I duck through honeysuckle and judge the drop along the ridge of junipers hugging the sandstone ridges. I could have pocketed my camera, but the grim reaper can't have one eye on the aesthetics. I can sing about the trees that died. The ash truly give up the ghost, stripped thin and dry, not letting the innumerable burrowings of beetles and pecks of birds bow them. The ironwood stand ready for the ressurrection, their dead branches stretch out for deliverance, even the flakey grey bark retains a lustre compared to the dusty bark of the ash. Why is it that the gray barked trees here die young, and we gray beards outlive them? Not an oak or hickory has died in the ten years we've been here, maybe two or three maples.
September 29 we had two days of sorely needed rain. When it wasn't raining it was often misting as if we were in a cloud. I like to hike on dark damp days, especially in the autumn, but this was not weather for cameras and camcorders, and I had a bit of catching up to do on my journal. Today continued cloudy and cooler with a hint of mist now and then. I hiked over to the South Bay trail and then went up the creek that drains the second swamp. I wanted to see if there were any signs of a beaver coming up that creek from South Bay and winding up in the East
Trail Pond. There was no water in the creek and just an anemic pool behind the New Pond dam.
Since the colony that was here moved back up to the Second Swamp Pond, I have now and then seen a beaver here, but never a gnawed tree. At those times there was more water and the vegetation in the old pond wasn't as thick as it was today. I couldn't walk up pond though so I assume a beaver would be hard pressed to do it.
I gravitated toward ridges where the going was easy. At the foot of what I called Beaver Point, a shag bark hickory tree that beavers had half girdled probably eight years ago finally blew over with a nice crown of changing leaves.
The beavers cut shag-bark hickories during their last winter here which I took as an indication of their grit. I took the old boardwalk through the Beaver Point Pond meadow, I didn't see any water in the pond.
I walked up the woods north of Otter Hole Pond where mostly large half girdled red oaks and and hickories remain.
There is a bit of water behind the dam but it was hard to imagine it affording any solace to a wandering beaver.
Then as I approached the meadow of the upper part of the old Otter Hole Pond, I saw a coyote in the grass.
It got up when it saw me, looked back, and then hopped gracefully through the meadow, I suppose to the woods on the other side.
This is probably the coyote I have seen twice around the Lost Swamp Pond, a small coyote but quite alert and healthy looking. I checked the grass where it had been lying down and didn't notice any bones or remains of a meal. I continued up the edge of the meadow and as I got closer to the East Trail Pond, I passed smaller ash trees and red maples that a beaver could harvest. No evidence of that though. One small red maple grew out of the completely down, half rotten trunk of a large red maple. There was enough life in the trunk to become one very long
root for the small, healthy looking tree.
I planned a complete search of the woods below and around the East Trail Pond but soon got distracted. I went up on to the ridge to the where the last beavers here had been harvesting trees just before they left, but I saw no activity
there. Then I sat above the dam and decided that while there was no major new work, the beaver was trimming the large red maple a little bit.
I walked around the maple to record all its nips.
There was no more gnawing on the two smaller maples that it started to cut, but the beaver had plenty of branches to cut from the tree already down.
It looked like some the stripped sticks from the downed maple were now on top of the lodge.
I couldn't sense any water coming through the dam, but the water is very very low behind the dam, and has been for some time. Will it rise?
I saw a trail in the grass going up the ridge east of the dam, but this is the usual porcupine route.
I went up the ridge and saw no beaver work, nor porcupine work. I realized I never noticed the tree rising above the rock dens where porcupines and beavers have lodged, a kind of bitternut hickory, I think, and neither porcupine nor beaver has gotten any meals off it.
I continued through the meadow, again seeing no beaver work. Hard to believe that a few years ago it was full of water
and every tall red oak in the woods north of the pond seemed in jeopardy. Most were partially girdled then, and most still thrive.
Then I checked some of the work around Shangri-la Pond. The upper pond is quite dry but the dam looks ready to hold back water.
The beavers are working on a maple cut just below the pond and I saw one small branch half way down the trail to the canal.
Once beavers get a branch to the pond they don't always take it to the lodge. On both sides of the channel to the canal there are piles of cut sticks, food for the winter, the way beavers cache food in a shallow pond.
They cut a large branch out of the large red maple windfall at the end of the north canal
Going back to the dam, I saw that they were about to cut down another basswood, so they still have a taste for them too.
I went up the ridge and saw that the beavers are getting a few cattails from the dam,
and while the lodge doesn't have any semblance of a cache around it, I saw a stripped log on the shore behind the dam, and some cut cattails floating out several yards in front of the dam where they made their cache last fall.
And they still continue to gnaw now and then on a large basswood and a large maple on the shore across from the lodge. If that maple falls toward the lodge it will make quite a dramatic photo looking down from ridge.
As I walked along ridge it looked like they continue to cut branches and strip bark from the trees they cut up there, but I didn't see any new trees cut down. The water is getting shallow up there, and up on the mossy parts of the north ridge, I saw two deer eating the acorns. Chickadees, nuthatches, and bluejays were all over. I haven't sat still enough to see if warblers are migrating through. In the wet woods in TI Park, I heard a comb frog. I hear peepers just about everywhere.
September 30 I went to the land to cut some of the dead ironwoods I scouted the other day on the ridge above the First Pond. I came into the area on path from the road and I went back to lunch taking the same path. When I went back I saw a dead chipmunk right in the middle of the path
and a few feet farther along saw another one that was half eaten.
The second reminded me of the dead muskrat we found on another path near the cabin a few weeks ago. Both animals had their head half eaten and their entrails spread out a bit near the carcass. Easiest predator to blame is a mink. In the winter we saw mink tracks in this area, and once saw the mink in
our nearby woodpile. Coincidently there were many vultures flying overhead but they were angled over the fields of our neighbor the farmer/butcher who sometimes dumps remains of slaughtered cattle nearby. The morning was not a complete dance of death. As I approached the edge of Teepee Pond, several green frogs squeaked and jumped into the pond. During the summer I fretted that the lack of pond vegetation would cramp their style. I was wrong. After lunch I toured the work of the Boundary Pool beavers. I approached from the ridge to the east, the way I usually come when I want to see them in the evening. Now I wanted to see how far up they had come up the ridge in their foraging for trees. I don't think they extended their foraging much farther, but the main trail back down to the pool and lodge was more worn down and
trees they had cut before had been taken away.
They have a steep trail on a direct line to the lodge, and there is also a gentler slope going down to the north leading to the upper end of Boundary Pool. I walked down that slope because at the bottom I saw that the beavers cut a small maple and had girdled a larger one.
Then I walked back to sit in front of the lodge, which is a visual delight, from the amorphous green duckweed to the fronds of the ferns now etched yellow framing the logs the beavers have piled into a home. The green frogs here are
quieter now, not like the frogs in wide open Teepee Pond. Here everything seems knitted together. Except the raven, of course. One followed me down the valley, and kept up its mundane barking which I always ignore. Then I began hearing the kerplunk call of a bittern coming from Wildcat Pond. I almost decided to try to sneak down and see it. Then I remembered the raven, and waited a bit longer. The raven burst out with laughing squawks. I don't know how it can read my mind, but it does. The raven hasn't imitated the whine and gnawing of the beavers, yet. So I returned
my attention to beaver world. There were a few recently stripped logs on the lodge and stripped logs in the water near it, ranged on the edges of what appears to be a channel.
There was no clear evidence of dredging here, but up at the channel up pond I saw a large push of fresh mud. There were stripped sticks all about on the shore. Beavers like a little depth where they eat.
There was dredging all up the channel though no heaves of mud as big as that heave at the south end of the channel.
They may be doing a little dredging in the smaller upper pool.
The pattern of their foraging this summer seemed to go like this: cut large and midsize elms down at the upper end of Wildcat Pond, around Boundary Pool, and as far up as a twenty yards above the Last Pool, about 100 yards from their
lodge; then they began foraging on the ridge south of the Logdam and Boundary Pool; now they are cutting small maples along the south shore of the valley
as well as larger ones
which struck me as a kind of endgame, eating closer to home because the shallow pools restrict their range. I got a nice photo showing their world closing in, as they vainly dredged what remained of Logdam Pool.
And then I took a few more steps and my theory was blasted. I saw a clear trail coming out of Logdam Pool and into the woods
A little ways along the trail I saw cut logs dropped before they could be brought to the pool.
Not only did beavers cut trees along the flat but they found my trail, went up that, and cut trees up on the ridge. Mostly they cut small trees
but they also began girdling some larger maples.
I spent the summer walking up the channel from pool to pool and foolishly invested that channel with more importance than the beavers did. It was helpful for carrying down elm logs from the end of the Last Pool, but has scant relevance to the foraging they want to do along the ridge. My path would do
just as well, high and dry though it is. Soon began to rain.
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